


Rrh-thanai

by Sineala



Category: Star Trek: Rihannsu - Diane Duane
Genre: Diplomacy, Gen, Post-Canon, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Ael welcomes the Federation to ch'Rihan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rrh-thanai

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lexigent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/gifts).



> The request asked for Ael and Spock, post-canon; I thought it would be interesting to give Spock a reason to come back to ch'Rihan. Thanks to Melannen and Lysimache for their help!
> 
> There are references to various instances of canonical character death that occur throughout the series.
> 
> There is also a spoiler for some events at the end of _Spock's World_ \-- I think we can safely assume these are in the same universe. I am also assuming that Spock is a captain in Starfleet by this point, though I could not find his rank mentioned specifically; Kirk's references in _The Empty Chair_ to no longer being an admiral ought to place the series after Star Trek IV sometime.

The first message was the unofficial one. One of the servants woke Ael from a restless sleep a little past midnight, and she padded down the hallways of her grand new home to the great atrium where the secured comm was. Ch'Havran loomed close in the bright night, covering a swathe of the sky in pale green-gold.

"A 'heads-up,' _llei'hmnë_ ," came Arrhae's sleepy voice, echoing from the entry to the south hallway; Ael looked up and saw her advisor's tangled hair, and Ffairl standing bleary-eyed at her shoulder, the both of them still in sleeping-tunics. They had asked to be notified immediately of any news, and they looked to be regretting it.

Perhaps she was still asleep. The phrase made no sense. How were they to lift their heads? It was another one of those damned Terran idioms. Arrhae had become less chary with those, Ael thought, than anyone with her background had a right to be... but then again, she was careful to only say such things in private. As was Ffairl.

"They're letting you know in advance of the formal announcement," said Ffairl, which at least was more informative.

Strange; it had been their idea. Ael tapped the commscreen on and grinned as she saw the message. The headers were faked, but even the forged path had been taken with some care: it was a dance through Orion space and that of other unaligned worlds, dipping through Federation territory and crossing into Rihannsu space at Artaleirh. A signal, then. _We were there_. It was hardly cryptographically encoded, but it was another message, for certain. She was meant to remember, to be mindful, as if she would ever forget.

_Lady_ , the message began, and she had to smile again, for she could imagine his very voice saying it. The title had sounded bizarrely formal to her at first, an unearned rank as it had been then, but Ael thought perhaps she had grown used to hearing it, as a wild _thrai_ might be given a name. Now it was rather less of a joke.

_Don't say we never did anything for you._

The terminal blinked blood-green: end of file. Ael scowled.

Ael peered up over the edge of the screen and raised her eyebrows at Arrhae and Ffairl. "He tells me nothing."

Arrhae stepped closer, the better to read the words. "He says you will like their choice, _llei'hmnë_. Is that not enough?"

"Far less than I would like," said Ael, with some asperity, and she fluttered a hand at them. "Go on, back to bed, both of you. You didn't need to rouse yourselves for an announcement that says so little."

The two padded back down the hall, with even the whisper of their footsteps echoing across the inlaid floors, resounding through the arched corridors, and Ael sat for a long time in the night, staring at the screen and wondering.

* * *

Eisn's noonday light slanted through the windows of what once had only been Ra'tleihfi's Senate chambers, and Ael resisted the impulse to prop her head in her hands and sigh. There had been so much waiting already, since the Federation offer, since their own announcement, since the acceptance, and now when the very moment was upon her, she felt she could scarcely bear it.

But she had never been one for biding her time more than necessary. A different woman might have resigned herself to a long career with _Cuirass_ in the Outmarches -- or at least as long as it would have taken Grand Fleet to be rid of her.

Perhaps it would have been tolerable if she had been alone, but she was not -- not now, and hardly ever. _The burden of command_ , someone had told her once. She thought perhaps it had been Kirk. At any rate, the galleries were full. The Senate and the praetors wanted to see this.

"There is news," said Aidoann -- finally! -- while coming up to just behind her shoulder, "that the Federation ship has achieved orbit. The envoy is asking for permission to beam down, _llhei_."

Ael had to smile at that, for Aidoann still would not call her "empress," or anything of the sort. No, for her it was still "madam," as it had been for so many long years on _Bloodwing_ , when Aidoann had been her third-in-command. She had come rather a long way from command of _Bloodwing_ herself.

_Trite_ , she thought, but aloud, she replied, in the most formal mode: "Very well. It is granted. Do you go and escort him here, t'Khnialmnae."

" _Ie_."

She rose from her chair. It would not do to sit during the introductions, to be lesser than the Federation; she had been creating the rules of empire as they came to her, but she knew that she dared not break this one, lest the Elements turn from her.

At the far end of the room, the gap underneath the great carved blackwood doors brightened, spilling the golden light of a Federation transporter signal onto the marble floor. The familiar whine was muffled. At least the envoy was mannered enough to beam in outside. She knew that Starfleet vessels in the course of their duties would set crew down wherever they wished -- likely they would prefer to beam down onto the Empty Chair itself -- but this was diplomacy, and delicacy was called for, even if the man in question was Starfleet. He knew what was proper. She would have expected nothing less of him.

The doors swung open. All the chattering stopped.

The man standing in the center was dressed in formal dark robes, bearing the sigils of his own house, embroidered in silver. _Not a uniform_ , she noted absently. _What does he mean by this?_

"Spock of Vulcan," said Aidoann, though it was unnecessary. "Captain in Starfleet, United Federation of Planets."

Spock crossed the room in quick long steps and halted before the chair where the two swords lay. She watched him take in the sight, all as he had left it.

He did not bow. She had not expected him to. With the authority he carried now, it would mean too much. He merely inclined his head, gravely, and stood at parade rest, hands behind his back, waiting for her to speak.

"I am gladdened," she said, finally, "to welcome you to ch'Rihan, as my guest."

"Your imperial majesty," he said, with perfect formality, "you do honor to the Federation with your welcome." The words were in Rihannsu, the crisp, proper dialect of an educated officer; she wondered if McCoy had given him lessons.

This had all been the Federation's idea; a Rihanha would never have thought of it. Ael had recoiled from the proposal at first, seeing only visions of _rrh-thanai_ in the offer, as her own ancestors had practiced; she would not give up children to be raised among them, not when they were allies. But Arrhae and Ffairl had been at pains to assure her that to the Federation this was no insult: it would be a short-term diplomatic tour, with one representative from each side visiting the other's homeworlds. It was a show of friendship. They expected, Arrhae had said, that she would send some smooth-tongued ambassador, some dignitary. They neither wanted nor expected her firstborn.

_Tafv_ , she thought, and the pain, still sharp, twisted within her.

Had he been alive, he would never have gone. But perhaps he was the very sort of man who should have gone, gone and come back transformed, freed from the chains of his hatred. It was too late now.

She did bow to the old tradition in one respect: she had sent them one of her kin.

Ael let herself smile, carefully, in friendship. "I look forward to showing you the Two Worlds in better circumstances than you last saw them."

Spock looked back at her, wordlessly, and then his eyes slid over once again to the pair of swords, lying across the Empty Chair, where their own hands had placed them.

_See_ , Ael wanted to say, _I have kept them for you, for the future._

But she said nothing, and Spock looked up at her -- somehow he was at the steps at the foot of the little dais.

"I speak for the Federation," said Spock, "when I say that I am very much in favor of this, and I wish for our continued friendship."

He looked up at her with cool eyes. Ael could not read him. It was not solely the fact that his body language was different because he was not Rihannsu; it was that in this situation he did not do what a Rihanha would have done. If he had been a Rihanha he would have smiled, Ael thought, numbly, trying to parse the way he stood, the way he looked, what it all meant. Perhaps this was mere politeness.

No. The intent came to her in frozen clarity. If he had been a Rihanha he would have bowed. He would have pledged his name's word. But Vulcans had only one name to give, and Aidoann had already announced him.

He would not, then. He could not. He was Vulcan. And even if he could, his Federation masters would likely frown upon it. There was diplomacy, and then there were... deeper gestures. He would not make those.

Spock lifted an eyebrow and stepped back, ducking his head a little. "I say this," he added, "also in my own name, and in that of my father Sarek, who is Vulcan's ambassador to Earth, and in that of my mother Amanda, who is also my clan-mother. Jointly they are the heads of Surak's clan, and advise the High Council."

The room exploded into shocked chatter -- _had he really said that?_ \-- and Ael could only grin in astonished delight.

Perhaps they were not so different.

* * *

She let the rest of the Senate talk to Spock, in informal conversation in an anteroom, after the introductions had been made; she watched them come close to him, not quite crowding him, but still striving to be in his presence, as if something of the glory that had given them their revolution would rub off on them. As if his _nuhirrien_ were a thing that could be transferred.

But they let her pass through them, the crowd parting, and eventually she found herself talking to Spock in the corner, as if this had been another one of Lieutenant Tanzer's rec room gatherings.

"I wished to inquire, your imperial majesty--"

"Ael," she said, and his eyes widened fractionally; for a Vulcan it was a shout. There was a lull in the conversation behind her, and someone -- Aidoann, she thought, always at her back -- glanced over. The gossips' tongues would already be wagging. "Oh, come, I gave you my name when I met you; surely you will not say we are strangers?"

Spock nodded. "Ael, then. I wished to inquire about your selection for this exchange program."

_O Elements._ Her fingers tightened on the plate she held, underneath, where she knew he could not see.

"Ask."

"Was it your choice, or hers?"

They had never talked about this. _What you did to her, Spock -- I saw the footage. She trusted you. I trusted you. We both did. And it is only she who was wrong. Life mocks us._

"To send my sister's-daughter was a mutual choice," she replied, stiffly. "It is traditional to send kin, a show of her restored honor, and she had... expressed an interest." 

_She did not want to share a planet with you._

He divined the motive she had not even hinted at. "You suspected I was being sent."

"It was -- how do you say it? -- logical." The word sounded odd in Rihannsu, in her mouth, a parody of Vulcans. Of this man.

But Spock only lifted an eyebrow. "Indeed."

"And you? How were you chosen?"

Spock's stare was perfect Vulcan unreadability. "I volunteered."

_She hates you, and I know exactly why._ The next thought was predictable, and Ael nearly laughed aloud at herself. _But I couldn't._

* * *

Among all the tales of the Ruling Queen, Vriha T'Rehu, one in particular had always captivated Ael: her death.

There was no argument about the bare facts of the matter: easterners of ch'Havran had risen against her and besieged her on the plains of Aihai, with more fighters than the queen could field.

(The easterners had supported Ael. In this, too, there was no argument.)

There the histories left it; schoolchildren learned nothing more beyond that. But Ael had been curious, as curious as the proverbial _hieth_ , and when she grew older she looked into the work of the ch'Havrannsu historians, those writing at the time, who had seen T'Rehu's reign with their own eyes. They had never been banned, for a ban would occasion interest, as those who had tried to stamp out other ideas had found, to their shame. The work had merely been encouraged to fall into disuse.

The siege at Aihai had been brutal, harsh and long, spanning a dry, cold season, as the easterners, even though they outnumbered her, struggled to gain a foothold in the half-built new city of Ra'tleihfi. They had surrounded her on the plain and starved her out: they dammed the rivers, razed the nearby fields, killed every last wild _hlai_. 

Even then the queen's soldiers had not given in. They built fire-pits in the rubble and baked bread from bitter _ssarrh_ , the spiky grass that was all that grew on the plain, even now. It was food neither for man nor beast, sickening those who ate it, yet they fought with nothing but that wretched bread in their bellies until at last they fell.

When tr'Paimnhei, who commanded the first ch'Havrannsu past the walls, heard of this, he gave orders that the bread be destroyed and its existence kept secret, so that none would know the extent to which T'Rehu's people had fought, their loyalty and determination. And indeed the government had: there was no use in people having any more ideas like that.

Ael had never been certain, before, if she had been proud of the old ways of _mnhei'sahe_ , or appalled at what they had done for their queen.

Now she looked around the room, at Spock, at the faces of her friends, her old shipmates, her companions in arms, and she wondered how many of them would eat _ssarrh_ -bread if she asked it. Perhaps they already had.

* * *

To call them nightmares would have been to glorify them. She had dreams, nothing more. Of all the prices she had paid for what she had done, surely this was one of the least consequential.

In the dream she was on Levaeri station. Her uniform was gone; she was in Federation combat grays. She had given up that much of herself already. Her hands were spattered emerald with others' blood, and she looked down at her hands opening a phaser pistol, fusing the power pack, ready to throw it, with a distant detachment, as if it were someone else who had been a murderer. She had killed four ships for this already, but bringing death was different when it was with her own two hands.

Even now, t'Hrienteh was at her side. Loyal. Even now Tafv lived. Even now he was betraying her, she knew, and the thought twisted her out of the dream, anguished and grief-struck, and halfway into consciousness--

Then she was somewhere else entirely. No. She was someone else.

She was standing on the transporter pad of the _Enterprise_ , staring at herself. Tafv was at her side. She drew herself up, with all the composure she could bring to bear in this alien place, and she watched herself do it from across the room, her shipmates at her side. 

_Fascinating_ , she thought, and she knew she had thought it then, but she never had, and she knew that as well.

Then she knew who she was, and as she stepped down from the transporter pad the dream dissolved around her and she sat upright in bed, half-strangled in her sleeping-furs, sweat gathering on her skin.

She reached out and slammed the comm toggle next to her in the dark.

" _Ie, llei'hmnë?_ "

It was on her lips to ask poor tr'Aithefv on the night shift to summon Spock, but then she thought of how that might sound. _Do I truly dare to summon the Federation envoy to my bedchamber? No, no, it can wait until morning. It was only a dream, after all._ The hazy impression had already begun to recede from her memory.

"Have a message sent," she said, finally. "Notify Spock that I wish to meet with him in the morning, at his earliest convenience."

Down the line, a keyboard tapped. "Sent, _llei'hmnë_. Will there be anything else?"

"No, thank you."

The comm clicked off, and Ael stared at the great vaulted ceiling of this ridiculous, opulent room in this ridiculous, opulent building that the people had insisted on building with the greatest alacrity. Veilt's Ship-Clan connections extended even to the architects of the Two Worlds, and s'Tyrava, s'Kaveth and their allies, when they had a thing in mind, accomplished it with near-terrifying precision.

Barely three _siuren_ later, the comm clicked. 

" _Llei'hmnë?_ " Tr'Aithefv sounded strange, confused.

"Yes?"

"The Vulcan, _llei'hmnë_ \-- he left a message for you. Without having accessed yours." Now the poor centurion's voice rose in bewilderment. "He inquires about your health and asks if he might visit as soon as is convenient for you."

It hadn't been a dream after all.

"Tell him," said Ael, "that right now is convenient."

* * *

Spock looked perfectly calm, composed, as if this had been any ordinary midday meeting and not midnight in Ael's sitting-room after... whatever that was.

"Wine?" she asked, for politeness' sake, knowing that he would refuse. "Water?"

After sitting down, he nodded. "Water, please."

She handed him a cup. Carved from pure _fvui_ stone four hundred years ago by the best north-continent craftswomen, gold-veined, it could have bought half of a city. But it was only a thing. To be used, as she had used the Sword. As he had.

He drank.

"I assume you have an explanation."

Spock looked over at her, still unflappable. "It is not unknown for individuals to develop a certain degree of rapport following mind-meld. The effect increases with repetition, and with the depth of the meld."

"It was only twice," Ael said, half in disbelief.

"It was enough. It is perhaps a consequence of the depth of meld that was necessary for the teaching of the Disciplines."

(The Disciplines. The pain. The fire. There was no pain. The fire, conquered at last. The crack as t'Hrienteh's spine broke.)

A thought occurred to her. "We're not-- this doesn't mean we--?"

Although she did not need to finish the sentence -- which did not bode well for her question -- Spock shook his head. "A true bond would be perceptible at all times, sensible to conscious thought. This was a connection established during a dream, in a state of heightened stress, compounded with adjacent memories of the original meld."

At least she had not inadvertently married him. That would have been, at the very least, exceedingly complicated. "You were witness to my dream?"

Spock nodded. "At Levaeri. I attempted to redirect--"

"I am aware." She grimaced. "Will this happen every time I dream ill? Or you?"

He stared implacably back. "I am able to control my dreaming mind."

Oh. Of course. Vulcans. Ael almost still expected them to be magicians. If he had said he could turn dirt to dilithium, she would have tried to believe him.

"Unfortunately," she replied, with a bizarre sense of shame at her own lack of skill, "I am not." No one could have expected her to know how to do this -- she was only Rihannsu -- and yet, this man's very presence made her aware of how their two races differed.

"The connection," he said, "should only be active when we are in proximity; it will not be a problem after I depart."

_Ah, but will you see all my dreams? Will you tell your Starfleet, your captain, about my mind?_

"No," she said, aloud, "I shouldn't think so. If there is nothing else right now, I would like to attempt to sleep again."

Spock rose and went to the door. "Of course."

She lay awake almost until dawn, and when she slept, she could not have said whether she dreamed.

* * *

She could not accompany Spock on all of his cultural tour of the Two Worlds, of course; she had responsibilities. Spock left the next day for ch'Havran, to be feted by Farmer Gurri -- or so Aidoann told her, when she brought her the day's news, discussed over morning-meal. It felt so strangely like a _Bloodwing_ mission briefing that she could not bear to divorce herself of the habit.

"You know," said Aidoann, picking at a roll, "I'm pleased they sent him."

"Are you?"

Aidoann grinned. "Ael. You like him."

She could feel herself color, dark green-bronze. She had thought that the people would talk about succession, but not Aidoann, and not so soon. And certainly not Spock. "Not like that. He is--" She could not explain what had passed between them. The Rihannsu had not seen fit to preserve the old words for the life of the mind, not after the gift had died out among them. "He is -- he could have been a brother to me. They all could have."

She did not need to say who she meant.

"I know." Aidoann smiled. "It doesn't matter how you like him. You're happy. It pleases us when you're happy."

She thought about what that "we" implied. She thought about Aidoann. Nniol. Khiy. Giellun. Everyone who had followed her. Everyone who had survived.

"Weren't you going to retire to Masariv?"

Aidoann plucked the last bit of _kheia_ off the serving-plate with her tongs and looked up, her face suddenly serious. 

" _Khre'r-- llhei_ , we swore we'd die for you." And then she smiled. "But if it's all the same, we'd rather live for you."

Sometimes _mnhei'sahe_ did not wound at all.

* * *

She did go with him to the site of the invasion: the Firefalls. They were still s'Rllaillieu lands, after all -- and had they not been, she suspected someone would have made her a present of them by now -- and she felt obliged to show him them when they were not covered in ground troops, to show him what it looked like when ch'Rihan practiced peace.

They stood together, looking down at the fire, and Ael wondered, not for the first time, how much of life was different now. For her, certainly it was. For her shipmates, for those they had left in their wake, of course. For her sister's-daughter, now being shown around Earth or Vulcan or Andor or Tellar with the greatest ceremony, no longer living in disgraced exile. And it was good to know that the state whose traditions she had fought to save was committing no dishonorable acts -- the trade being that she knew this because she had to be the state. But somewhere, she thought, in a poor House, a servant was being cuffed yet again for not sweeping the hall clear. Petty lords were squabbling for this or that bit of land, in feuds that had originated when the Travelers had made planetfall. On a distant colony, a settlement was trying to stretch the last of the winter skyroot crop until spring. Many people likely woke up in the morning and went on with their day, exactly the same as it had been. It did not matter to them that she was here, that the Three were gone.

Softly enough that none of the onlookers could overhear, she asked, "Was it worth the price?"

It was a question born of feeling, not one to put to a Vulcan, and she wondered if he would chide her for it. He did not. "You paid far more than we did. But I have seen your worlds, and they will remember you well, with kindness."

"Will they?"

"Ael," he said, reproaching, almost sword-sharp, and she looked up. "Yes. They will."

She wanted to ask then of the Sundering, whether Vulcans still quoted S'task's last song, whether they knew of his dying words. But it was too much, and she knew in her heart that the people were not ready for that peace. Not yet.

But perhaps -- perhaps soon.

* * *

She slept well, for the rest of the visit. There were no dreams.

* * *

When Spock left, she and Arrhae were the last ones to see him off. There was something strangely appropriate in that. Arrhae's farewell was formal, polite, and Ael assumed that meant that all the arranged data exchange had happened at some earlier point -- you could not very well offer a Vulcan a handclasp and palm off a datachip that way. It was all cultural reports anyway, but still interesting reading, a view of her own people from another's eyes; Arrhae had shown her a draft. 

"Safe journey, sir," said Arrhae, and then something in Federation Standard that the pocket duotronic translator couldn't quite catch.

Spock raised an eyebrow. "I will pass on your regards to the doctor."

"And Naraht?" Ael put in.

Spock nodded, and Arrhae, without being asked, retreated a little further down the shuttleport walkway.

"I will return," Spock said, "when your people are ready to hear a message from mine."

Her breath caught in her throat. How could he know? They had not spoken of it.

But then, Vulcans hardly needed to speak of things. There was a tentative brush at her mind, nothing like the meld, but unmistakably the presence of another soul, and she nodded and smiled.

He turned and stepped into the shuttle hatch.

"Wait."

He stopped, half-turned, holding himself quite still, exactly poised on the verge of departure.

"I have my own message," she said, and very quietly she gave him her names. All of them.

He was silent, but she knew he had understood. For an instant she thought he might indeed bow, or kneel, the way she knew that Vulcans, too, once did, bending double, baring the back of the neck to the sword. But he straightened up instead and held out his hand in the _ta'al_.

"Live long and prosper."

And then he was gone.

The little shuttle's iondrivers cut in, and she stood watching the tiny bright speck as it floated away into the sky until it could no longer be seen.

She felt as if she might laugh, or cry.

Then Arrhae and Ffairl were on one side of her, and Aidoann was on the other side of her, throwing an arm around her and grinning, the way she had always done after some glorious battle.

"Come, _llhei_ ," Aidoann said, laughing, "there's work to be done. We can't run this place without you."

**Author's Note:**

> Following the tradition of canon, I have borrowed existing tales of war and shoved them into Rihannsu history. The mentioned tale of T'Rehu under siege is actually attributed to Julius Caesar at Dyrrhachium; all credit here goes to Suetonius.


End file.
